Our family is blessed to have 2 beautiful boys, Jeffrey and Jack. Jeffrey, our oldest son, was born with PFFD and FH,(aka: leg-length discrepancy) This blog is our way of sharing the marvelous adventure our family is embarking on, one millimeter at a time.

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Lookin' Solid

Hello and Happy belated Easter. We've been super busy, what with a whole week off from school and all. Woohoo!
We've gardened, cleaned, gone to the Philadelphia Zoo, visited all sorts of family, took a nature walk, and um...what was that other thing... oh yea, played baseball!

We even made time on Thursday to go to our appointment with Dr. Standard. I'll skip right to the medical stuff and our visit to Baltimore.
Thursday morning the whole fam headed south around 10am and returned to our home around 8:15pm.
L O N G Day! But, of course well worth it!
With Jack and Jeffrey in tow we parked, ate lunch at the hospital cafe and went down to see Ms. Kym. That's Jeffrey's physical therapist in Baltimore. Therapy was at 1:00. We took the STAIRS down to the basement. That's right, I said "stairs." Jeff had never climbed up or down those stairs. We were always in a wheelchair/stroller in the elevator. Kym said Jeff's range of motion and strength were great, especially for his age and this point--post fixator. The only slight concern, surprise, surprise...his weak ankle. She watched him stand on one foot and run up and down the hallway. Honestly, that was the best he's ever done both. Showoff! haha

We discussed the possibility of having an orthotic, ankle brace, to help stabilize his leg, but after consulting a few other therapists and the good Doc himself, all agreed we should let him just be a kid. The brace could limit his activity and why would we want to do that if it is not causing him any pain right now? If at some point his knee becomes so far bent in that it is over the inside of his foot, then we would pursue that option.
Physical therapy is lined up at home for the next 7 weeks, once a week. Dr. Standard and Kym said that his own play therapy (swimming, biking, playing baseball) was enough! YES! No more therapy! Don't get me wrong, it was great, but it's nice not to have to worry about rushing to drive to TWP .
After therapy, we went to the 2nd floor for our clinic visit. The appointment time was 2:00, what time were we seen??? 4:45/5:00ish. We are used to the wait, but the boys had a tough time trying to occupy themselves.

Waited with lollies

Even spied on Dr. Standard as he went to other rooms and waved and yelled hi like "We're here!"

When the good doctor walked in the boys were excited and tired. It's tough trying to listen to the doctor and keep 2 restless boys in check. Jamie is so good at that!
We looked at the xrays.

Dr. Standard was showing Jeffrey the rod that's in his leg to keep his femur strong and free from breakage. He had a hard time finding the original point of the osteotomy (bone cut) since it has healed and filled in so well :)

Cool. You can see how the femur is now longer than the other side and his knees are uneven.

The doctor pulled up the original x-ray from April 1, 2010 (our initial consult) and put it side by side with the current one April 28, 2011. Craziness!

Current x-ray Original x-ray from last year

Well, good news all around. Glad to be through this phase. Still keeping an eye on that ankle.
I took this pic with my phone the other day when he was bare foot and I really noticed the appearance of the ankle.

Thanks for your continued support of reading the blog, coming out to cheer on our bball player at his tee ball games, asking how the family is doing, and just building us up.

That's amazing! My daughter's first lengthening surgery is coming up, August 10th, and I am so nervous. Thank you for posting the video where he says, "It's okay." He's so cute and I've struggled to find things videos like that one that I can show to her.